Kris Letang’s reported insistence on a contract with an annual value north of $7 million has garnered a significant amount of negative attention, but it’s likely just the beginning of a new model for the contracts of star players.

With the elimination of “back-diving” in contracts, suddenly star players are going to have a much more difficult time landing the kind of money they’re accustomed to. Doubtless, the salary cap will act to suppress the salaries of even star players, but even so it’s only natural to expect some inflation. Even with that inflation, stars are going to make significantly less than they what did.

Consider, for example, Shea Weber’s contract in Nashville – a contract originally inked as an offer sheet from Philadelphia that the Predators chose to match. Over the first eight years of the deal, Weber earns an average of $11.5 million per season – yet his cap hit is only $7.9 million thanks to the addition of low salary years late in the deal. Ryan Suter, who signed with the Minneosta Wild last summer, is in a similar situation, earning an average of $10 million per year over the first eight years of his deal despite a cap hit just north of $7.5 million. Even Duncan Keith, with a modest cap hit just over $5.5 million, earned an average of $7.2 million per season on his deal – despite the fact it was signed several years ago.

It’s the reason why Evgeni Malkin’s cap hit is $9.5 million while Sidney Crosby’s is $8.7 million – Malkin’s cap hit is nearly a million higher, but because it came under the new CBA it accurately reflects what he’ll earn over his new deal. Crosby, despite the cap hit, will actually earn $1.3 million more per season in real dollars than Malkin will over the first eight years of his new contract.

While it’s still too early to know exactly how the new CBA will affect contracts, it isn’t too early to guess that cap hits for star players will rise, but salaries will actually drop. The average annual value will find a midpoint between those two figures, which is why a value for Letang somewhere between $7.0 million and $8.0 million isn’t actually unreasonable – nobody would have blinked at a $7 million cap hit with a much larger annual salary, and all Letang is asking for is a modest inflation of that cap hit in order to add a little more money to the deal. It’s what Malkin got, and while Letang isn’t Malkin he was a Norris Trophy finalist this season – and it’s not difficult to imagine the kind of deal he would command as an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2014.

Pittsburgh, understandably, has concerns about dedicating that much money to a player other than Crosby or Malkin. Sooner or later, though, it seems like the sort of test every team will need to face.

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